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Tuesday, July 17, 2012

This is Why I’m not British

Although it breaks my heart. My goal in life is to grow up
and be Hugh Laurie with his legit accent that he can turn on and off at will.
And when I say his legit accent I’m referring to his American accent, so
there’s a topsy-turvification of perspective for you. But we’re not here to
talk about Hugh Laurie, stubbly though his face is; we’re here to talk about
Harry Potter. Naturally.

We now interrupt these messages to present this disclaimer:
I’m not a hard-core die-hard otherwise-hyphen-crazed Harry Potter fan. Actually
I don’t much care for Harry at all; Neville is the bomb though. But the books
are good, and that’s what I happen to be reading right now, so there. Relevancy
managed.

Moving on. HP 6 is all about the snogging. Plus is has the
greatest stand-alone quotes of the whole series I’ve come across so far, save
for one of my favorites in number 5. Mostly due to Dumbledore, but that’s
probably because he’s gay. Or maybe not. Actually, his coolness likely occurs
independent of his gayness. But that’s not been substantiated. Anyway.
Snogging. HP 6 is all about the snogging. Ron and what’s-her-face, especially.
The point is, as I was reading that, I wanted no part of it. I don’t like the
idea of this crude, carnally-based “snogging”; it seems so…I dunno, impersonal
and mechanical, basically meaningless. It doesn’t take into consideration the
other person and what they mean and all that stuff. I much prefer the notion of
kissing.

And while we’re on the topic of books I’m reading/ have
read/ pretend or claim to have read in order to appear smart/ fabricated
entirely, let’s talk about Shades of Grey, grey being the British spelling to
the inferior gray of those weird American people seeing as Mr. Fforde who is
the author is from the United Kingdom which I’m pretty sure is what you get
when you transplant British citizens into the video game Kingdom Hearts. Don’t
confuse this book with that other one that’s the one I’m not talking about,
because I’m not talking about that one. Actually, I’m not talking about this
one either, but I like the title so I figure I’d work it in since it fits like
those puzzle pieces that you just keep jamming together until they lie flat so
seamlessly together.

So shades of grey. The older and wiser I get—one year at a
time, year after year—the more I figure out that nothing is just as black and
white as it seems at first glance. Except black and white photos after you’ve
horked the contrast until there are only two colors left (black and white, in
case you didn’t pick up on that). And panda bears, but only if they’re really
clean; otherwise they have brown dirt, or I guess if they’d been fighting they
might have red blood on them. But that’s about it, I can’t think of anything
else that’s just straight-up black and white. And by I can’t think of anything
else, I mean there is nothing else. Because if there was I would have thought
of it.

Anyway, this is stemming from a conversation I’ve had a
couple times with my mom about my sister dating. She’s not quite sixteen and
being the happy Mormon family that we are, that means no dating yet. But she’s
got friends that are boys. So the solution that my mom—and the other parents in
the stake—have come up with is that their kids can hang out in groups and such
as long as there’s a mismatched number of guys to girls, with all kinds of more
detailed stipulations for specific scenarios. So I’m not doing a very good job
of conveying this, but we keep having long off-shooting debates about the rules
they’ve set and why the kids should stick to them and why we’re supposed to
follow what the prophet says even if it is arbitrary. The main point I’m
drawing from all of it though is that even something as seemingly clear-cut as
Don’t date until you’re sixteen actually is not as clear-cut as it seems. My
solution? Be gay. Duh.

P.S. I've set today as the deadline for telling my mom, because if I don't have a deadline it'll never happen. So hopefully that's what I'm doing right now.

5 comments:

If I were on facebook, and this post were on facebook, I would [thumbs up] Like this. But since neither of those is the case, I just like it. Neville is okay, I guess. But you should like Hermione. She's smart and super book! (that means cool in old school text language) Or Ron because he's freaking awesome. I agree, though, that Harry is not like-worthy. Good call not choosing the Chosen One.